In The Mind Of XANA
by MntT77
Summary: After two and a half years spent in intense, writhing agony, XANA intends to get torturous and brutal revenge on his five worst enemies. (Takes place during season 4)
1. The Assault Begins

It was dinner time at Kadic academy. Jeremie, Odd and Aelita were sitting at the same table they always did. Odd, as usual, was wolfing through his meal, which was spaghetti and meatballs. Aelita, on the other hand, had barely touched hers.

"Hey Aelita, is something wrong?" Jeremie asked.

"Yes… no… I don't know" Aelita glanced at her shoes.

"What's on your mind?"

"It's just… sometimes I wonder if this fight against XANA will ever end"

"Of course it will, Aelita. Look at how much progress we've been making lately – we've managed to collect a lot of data from the Replikas we've discovered so far, and I've no doubt that data will help us defeat XANA once and for all"

"Yes, I know, but… sometimes I wonder how you all stand it"

Odd had just finished the last morsels from his tray. "What do you mean?"

"Our struggle against XANA has been going for two and a half years, and there's no end in sight. What happens if we don't defeat XANA before we graduate? Or, heaven forbid, what if we even DIE?"

"I don't see it that way", Odd said.

"Oh? How do you see it?"

"As far as I'm concerned, we always give our all against XANA, so even on the off-chance he beats us one day, at least we died trying. But, you know, there's no way XANA will ever take me down" Odd began leaning back on his chair. "My fighting skills are just too advanced for him to handle" Odd leaned back further, and ended up falling backwards onto the floor. Jeremie and Aelita began laughing.

"Your fighting skills might be up to scratch, Odd, but your co-ordination leaves a lot to be desired" Jeremie said. "By the way, I don't suppose either of you know where Ulrich is, do you?"

"Oh, he's on a date with Yumi" Odd said nonchalantly.

"Really?!" Aelita was shocked. "That's quite the development"

"Yeah, I know, plot twist of the century, right? But it's true. Yumi's parents and Hiroki are out of town for the weekend, so Ulrich's planning to spend the evening at her place. In fact, he should probably be arriving there right about now"

Ulrich knocked on the door to Yumi's house. After five seconds, Yumi appeared.

"Hi Ulrich. I'm really glad you could make it"

Ulrich started blushing. "So, er… what do you wanna do?"

"I don't know. Do you fancy playing Go?"

"No way, you're too good at it – you always beat me!"

Yumi smirked. "That's true". She pondered for a little while. "Maybe we could just put on some music and just… talk"

"T-Talk? What do you mean by that?"

"Come on, Ulrich, you know what talking means" Ulrich blushed once again at Yumi's teasing.

"Um… er… well… where did you say your parents were again?"

"Oh, they're attending a friend's wedding or something", Yumi said. "Nothing special"

"Would you… er… like to do some Pencak Silat training?"

Yumi rolled her eyes and laughed. "Pencak Silat, huh? You sure know how to liven up the party, don't you? Alright, let's go into the garden"

However, as the two of them went to leave the house, rain began to fall.

"Well, so much for that plan" Ulrich said.

Suddenly, Ulrich's phone began to ring. "Hello?"

It was Jeremie. "Ulrich, are you with Yumi?"

"Yeah"

"XANA's just launched an attack. Get to the factory as soon as you can!"

Ulrich sighed in frustration. "We'll be right over" He hung up. "XANA alert – it looks like our evening together will have to wait"

"Damn it!" Yumi was visibly annoyed. "Come on then, let's go! The sooner we get this over with, the better"

However, as the two of them ran towards the pavement, they heard thunder and lightning booming and crackling in the night sky.

"Wow, it's one heck of a storm" Yumi remarked. "I've never seen anything like it before"

"You're telling me – one minute ago it was clear skies, and now this! Do you think this might be XANA's attack?"

"Maybe. Come on, we haven't a minute t- ARRRRRRRRRRGH!"

Before Yumi could finish her sentence, she was struck by a bolt of lightning. Then, several other bolts of lightning concentrated their energy on her, all in unison. Ulrich could do nothing but stare in shock as Yumi screamed in pain. After a few seconds, Yumi disappeared entirely, and the lightning ceased.

"Yumi, no!" Suddenly, another bolt of lightning came down and hit Ulrich. Three other bolts began to circle around him like an unholy trinity, and soon enough he had disappeared as well.

Meanwhile, Jeremie, Aelita and Odd were just emerging from the sewers and running towards the factory. Just before they could reach it, however, they felt an intense rumbling beneath their feet, which knocked the three of them over. All at once, the bridge split cleanly in two behind them. The half that they were on began to slope downwards. They tried futilely to get up, but soon enough they had landed on the floor again, and ended up falling into the cold river underneath them.

As the three of the resurfaced, Aelita looked dejectedly at the others.

"How on earth are we going to get to the factory now?"

"There's another passageway on the other side of the factory building", Jeremie said. Jeremie pointed north-west. "That way"

"Great, nothing like a little swim" Odd said.

However, before any of them could move, Odd was struck by a bolt of lightning. He cried with pain.

"Odd!" Aelita screamed, and within seconds she was being struck by lightning as well.

"W-what is going on here? What i-" Before Jeremie could finish his sentence, he was also being encased by lightning. After a few seconds of intense, agonising pain, the three of them disappeared into thin air.


	2. Yumi

Yumi awoke.

She was lying on the pavement, surrounded by four tessen fans.

"W-where am I?" Yumi was still disoriented. She looked up, and noticed that a piece of paper was descending gracefully. As she stood up, she grabbed the paper and looked at it. It contained just one word, printed in kanji and in red ink – Ishiyama.

"What in the world is going on?" Yumi wondered. She picked up her cell phone and tried to call Jeremie, but her phone was not picking up any signals.

She looked around her. Though it was the middle of the day, there wasn't a single car on the roads, or any people on the streets. There were no sounds other than the gentle whistling of the springtime breeze.

Now that her mind had become less clouded, Yumi noticed that she was standing just a few metres away from the Kadic academy gates. Yumi checked the time on her phone – it was 4:44.

"They should have finished class by now", Yumi said to herself. "I'd better go onto campus and check things out"

But as she entered the courtyard, there was still no one in sight. The light winds were becoming gradually more intense – a cacophony of jumbled whispers which Yumi was unable to decipher. Yumi was determined for some answers to her questions, and burst into the dormitory building.

She was struck by sheer horror when she saw what lay before her.

The bodies of the students and teachers of Kadic academy were strewn across the floor, piled on top of each other indiscriminately. They had evidently been dead for some time, as their mangled bodies had begun to rot – their skin was tinged with green, and maggots danced in their flesh wounds. Blood stained the walls. Yumi had never seen anything this awful before, and vomited.

Yet the aroma of this death-filled room was far worse than the vision of it could ever be. It permeated Yumi's nostrils in a way she could never define, and could never bring herself to try to define. It was the scent of rotting flowers. It was the scent of prey ripped in two by their predators. It was the scent of violation. The scent of degradation. The scent of suffering. It was intangible, yet all too real. It could only hope to be conveyed with a single word – death. It was the smell of past, present and future death. Yumi vomited again. Once she had recovered, a horrifying thought overcame her.

"But… that means that…" Yumi frantically searched through the corpses of students who had once been taught alongside her, but now were simply fleshy husks that would never walk again. She saw the corpse of William, and of Sissi, Jim, Mrs Hertz and Mr Delmas. Eventually, her fears became a reality – lying next to each other, she found the charred bodies of Jeremie and Aelita. Yumi began to cry.

"How could this have happened?" Yumi banged her fist against the wall in frustration. The chilling winds from outside blew through the open door – their sound was much clearer now.

'Shi… shi… shi… shi…' The winds whispered.

"Wait a minute. If everyone at Kadic is dead, that must mean… NO!" She searched even more frantically through the remaining corpses, and soon enough she discovered Ulrich's body lying on the floor near the end of the corridor, close to Odd's.

"No, no, no!" She began shaking Ulrich's body, even though she knew it was useless. "Wake up, WAKE UP!" She slapped his lifeless, pale face. "WAKE UP!" Then, in a fit of rage, she threw his body against the wall. "WAKE! UP!"

As the body slumped pathetically to the floor, Yumi realised immediately what she had done – not only had Ulrich gone through untold horrors, but now she was disrespecting the one part of him that still remained. She started crying again, wondering how she could possibly have been so thoughtless.

And in that instant, the wind's whispering only became even louder.

'Ishiyama…'

Yumi let out an inhuman gasp. Without fear, without remorse, without any emotion in her mind other than pure, unbridled determination, she began sprinting towards her home.

She crossed the empty streets, which were filled with empty shops and empty cars.

The wind whistled even more loudly than before.

As she turned the corner, she could see four dead crows lying in the gutter.

Within a few minutes, she had reached her home. She knocked on the door. No one answered, and though this did not surprise Yumi at all, it still enhanced the sinking feeling that was growing like a parasite inside her. She tried opening the door – it was locked.

"I don't believe this!" She tried to force the door open. It wouldn't budge. She slammed her body into it, causing herself considerable pain in her left arm and abdomen. All sense of logic had fled her mind by this point , and she desperately slammed into the door again, and again. Finally, on the fourth attempt, by which point she could barely see through eyes filled with streaming tears, she charged at the door and it burst open. She fell to the ground and hit her head hard against the floor.

"Ow…" She rose, and realised that no one was in the living room.

"Mom? Dad? Hiroki? Anyone?" she called. There was no response. She went into the kitchen.

No one was there either, but on the table there were four bowls of rice, all of which had two chopsticks standing upwards inside of them. Yumi gasped. There was steam coming from the rice, as though it had just been cooked.

"I WILL find them!" Yumi muttered, although she didn't have even a hint of confidence that she might be right. She went upstairs, and checked her parents' bedroom. No one was there.

She checked Hiroki's bedroom. No one was there.

She checked the bathroom. No one was there.

"The only place in this house I haven't checked is…" Her hands were quivering. "… my… room…"

However, just as she reached for the door handle, she stopped. "If I check in here… and they aren't there…" Her left fist tightened. "No. I have to do this. I have to be strong" She opened the door.

Both of Yumi's parents and Hiroki were standing there, facing the window, towards the north. Yumi was overcome with relief.

"Mom! Dad! Hiroki! You're alive!"

They did not move.

In an instant, Yumi's fears came flooding back. "Mom? Dad? Hiroki? Can you hear me?"

"How DARE you try to talk to us!" her mother responded scathingly.

"Mom?"

The three of them turned around to face her, and Yumi covered her mouth to keep from screaming at how unnatural and inhuman they looked. Their faces were bitter and scowling, and their eyes were filled with white mist. Their movements were jerky, and they lacked the warmth and compassion that they had always had before. 'Shi… shi… shi…' the wind continued to whisper.

"I am NOT your mother! How DARE you insinuate that someone as disgusting as yourself could ever be MY daughter! Don't you think we've suffered ENOUGH by your hand?!"

"Mom… dad… I don't understand. What HAPPENED?! Why is everyone else dead?"

"How dare you think you have any right to speak us to, you vile, sickening wretch! You know PERFECTLY well what happened. You know perfectly well what caused our demise!"

"But you're not dead!" Yumi cried. "You're standing right here in front of me!"

"The fate you brought upon us was far worse than any death could ever be", Hiroki said. "We're toyed with like puppets, day and night. We shall never rest. We shall never die. We shall never live. All because of YOU! Because of you, XANA is our master now!"

Yumi gasped. "How do you know about–"

"SILENCE!" snapped her mother. "He made sure to tell us EVERYTHING about you and your group of despicable friends, and how you put the entire WORLD at risk for your own personal sense of comfort!"

"That's not true!" Yumi knew that she couldn't let their words get to her. "I was doing it to preserve life – isn't that what you raised me to do?"

"You preserved one life at the expense of billions", her father continued. "And now, even that one life has been expunged. Your sacrifice was for nothing. There is no one left. No one… except for you"

Yumi was now completely blinded by her tears. "You're lying, you're lying!" Yumi cried. "This has to be a nightmare! It has to be, it has to!"

"It IS a nightmare – for us", Hiroki said. He began to walk slowly towards Yumi. "Because of you, we are trapped in an endless nightmare. Though unlike you, we can never have the privilege of waking up"

"Please!" Yumi reached out and tried to touch Hiroki, but her hand went directly through his body. "Huh?"

"We have no bodies" Hiroki said. "You took them from us. What you have done could never be forgiven in the lifetime of a thousand Earths" He reached out his hand and slapped Yumi clean across her left cheek. The stinging pain shot through Yumi like a bullet.

"But… how… how are you able to touch me if I can't touch you?"

The three of them glared at her, giving no answer.

"Please, I need this to stop! I'll do anything, just make it STOP!"

Her father picked her up by her neck, and then punched her in the stomach, and then across the face.

"It astounds me that you have the sheer audacity to ask for mercy, after everything you've done!" the mother said. She approached Yumi, who was lying on the floor in agony, and kicked her in the stomach. Yumi had never felt this much physical pain before in her life. Yumi stumbled towards the door, scarcely able to think. All she knew was that she had to escape. However, before she could reach the door, her father stood in front of it, blocking her only exit.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Anywhere that isn't here!" Yumi shouted. "I can't stand this any longer, and I shouldn't have to!"

"Oh no, no, no!" her mother said. "You WILL stand it for longer. Much longer. And you SHOULD have to. And we will make sure it happens"

"XANA will rip at your flesh!" Hiroki cried. "He will tear at your very soul! He will annihilate EVERYTHING about you! Yet you will not die! You will NEVER, EVER die!"

The wind's whispering suddenly turned into excruciatingly loud screeches. "Shi! Shi! Shi!"

Her father punched her in the face again. "Everything you've known. Everything you've loved. Everything you've cherished. Everything that was ever of any value to you. All of that has been undone now! And you will NEVER, EVER escape him!"


End file.
